"An American female constitution, which collapses just in the
middle third of life, and comes out vulcanized India-rubber,
if it happen to live through the period when health and
strength are most wanted."
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES: _Autocrat of the Breakfast Table_.


"He reverenced and upheld, in every form in which it came
before him, _womanhood_.... What a woman should demand is
respect for her as she is a woman. Let her first lesson be,
with sweet Susan Winstanley, _to reverence her sex_."
CHARLES LAMB: _Essays of Elia_.


"We trust that the time now approaches when man's condition
shall be progressively improved by the force of reason and
truth, when the brute part of nature shall be crushed, that
the god-like spirit may unfold."
GUIZOT: _History of Civilization_, I., 34.




CONTENTS.


PART I.